Ariel Kaminer is skipping out as the editor of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section—you know, that section you turn to first while curled on your cream-colored couch while your fit lawyer-husband reads Sports nearby. She'll now take a newly-created position—deputy editor for online journalism—while still working in the culture department.
Two weeks ago Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni reviewed Kobe Club, the newest highly-contrived chowhouse from restaurateur/felon/Rocco DiSpirito co-star Jeffrey Chodorow. The Brunster did not find favor with the place, granting it zero stars and noting that "it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account." Today Chodorow strikes back, taking out a full-page ad in the back of the Dining section (click to enlarge) that rambles on in crazy-person tiny type about how Bruni is out to get him and ends with this inevitable warning:
Sure, there's this New York Times essay on the psychology of flame emails, but of course it's all fulla science and chin-scratching, plus an unfair smear on your brain's amygdala as an impulsive flaming bitch-gland. Good examples of proper flames are, at best, alluded to. Fortunately, there are comments on the story, but unfortunately, they also suck. An alarming number reveal the Gray Lady's gray readership by alluding to pre-email communications like telephones, letters, banging on rocks, etc. Only one commenter is pro-flame, and another offers the slyly relevant anti-flame chestnut, "If you wouldn't be happy seeing it on the front page of the New York Times, don't send it." No mention of drunk e-mailing, though of course, you can always brew your own.
The Times chose to illustrate their story on the potential XM/Sirius merger. with an A.P. photo of Candace Bushnell interviewing Janice Dickinson for her Sirius show. (RELATED: Does every third-rate lit-celeb have a satellite radio show? And then when do they write?) But as a sharp-eyed tipster noted, "The real story is that two women of a certain age are being haunted by a trendy ethnic ghost with an upturned collar." If we didn't know any better, we'd say it's Ron Galotti. Either way, kinda spooky.
As noted philosopher Carrie Bradshaw once put it, the New York Times wedding announcements are "the straight woman's sports pages." Altarcations is all about scoring the game. Every week, we will evaluate the latest newlyweds, based on an elaborate rating system, described below.
Prudish librarians are pushing to ban young adult book The Higher Power of Lucky because of a reference to a rattlesnake-bitten dog ballsack on the first page. And yesterday's front-page Times article about the Newbery award-winning book's controversial use of the word 'scrotum' has lit bloggers more keyed up than they've been since J. K. Rowling last uttered a gnomic death-threat to Harry Potter. The author defends her word choice thusly: "The word is just so delicious." Yummy!
The 'Times' Styles section went the extra mile with what the paper's ethics guide calls "fanciful contrived situations." To illustrate Guy Trebay's piece on the state of gay PDA—the gays are anxious about making out in public! But where "were all the same-sex lovers making out on street corners" on Valentine's Day?—they hired two actor-model types to make out around Manhattan. Do gays exist? Also! Are Styles stories any more true if the people they're about are real?
Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be the two days of the week when we're free to be ourselves. No work means the days are wide open—the tie goes on the rack, the first meal of the day comes with alcohol. We yawn happily, like baby birds in anticipation of that sweet, healing leisure we read about in the paper. This is not what really happens.
Late capitalism produces two kinds of insufferable rich people: New York Times insufferable rich people, with their concerns about Culture and Minorities and the like, and Wall Street Journal insufferable rich people, who mostly just ride around shining. When the markets are open, it can be tough to distinguish the two. But everybody's working for the weekend, which arrives in the bifurcated form of Sunday Styles in the Times and Pursuits in the Journal—both soft-core catalogs of places and things, usually with exact prices attached. So, who's buying better shit?
This weekend brought New York Times "On Language" columnist William Safire's 31st article since 1983 that has used the term "phrasedick":
In which we find the very best autism stories in the Times so you don't have to go through all the boring ones.
For a brief moment late last night, according to a NYT.com visitor with an itchy screenshot finger, photo and text from two stories met and collided. Also? Dudes, we totally missed the Slayer show at Hammerstein Ballroom!
A handy guide to the subtexts of this weekend's New York Times Book Review.
The secret, barely-read Saturday Times is all girls, girls, girls. America's Lycra-wearing teenage daughters enjoy being pinned to the ground! Also, there is some concern about their cervixes. Sure, there's a paltry 350 right-column words on some nonbinding House resolution, and 290 left-column ones on the CIA operatives indicted in Italy, but all that pales to the glorious, glorious middle. Yes, people are fighting over whether to HPV-vaccinate sixth-grade girls, but more than that, said girls are now—wait for it—wrestling with boys!
It's Punch Sulzberger Award nominations time! Today's New York Times memo calls for submissions for the yearly staff award, which recognizes the "outstanding contributions of our staff members that best exemplify a commitment to our Company's Core Purpose, Core Values and Rules of the Road." (Uh, wacky!) The winner also gets 10 percent of his or her annual base salary; noms are due March 9. So may we suggest NYT theater editor Patricia Cohen, who's transitioning to a new position? (The theater slot will be filled Rick Lyman.) After all, there was no one who liked to give over-eager theater publicists the smackdown more; her favorite three words are reportedly "DON'T PITCH ME."
Not long ago, both the NY Times and the LA Times opened the golden gates of their movie review sections to You, the person of the year. Oooh, it's Web 1.34! Well, Your reviews are in—and You totally suck! You suck even worse than Stephen Holden!
Can't get enough of as-of-yesterday retired Times-man Charlie LeDuff? There's a nice little interview over on "Journal-isms ." Seems that Chuck's a little put out that they gave Dan Barry the Crappy Overwriting Across the Country column that by rights should have been his. Also, "I can't write the things I want to say. I want to talk about race, I want to talk about class. I want to talk about the things we should be talking about." See, Charlie knows a little about race, being "one-eighth Native American." And how! "The late 'Gerald Boyd said I was the most diverse person he knows,' LeDuff said. 'And that dude was black.'" Okay, we added that last line. But you know that's what he meant.
